The skin game was a melancholy trip down memory lane
The morning after the big feast, with tryptophan still running through my veins, I woke up early and entered hospitality at the beginning of Thanksgiving I would not have known: golf streaming live on a personal device.
Making a big difference in a few decades.
More than 40 years ago, back when Vin Scully was still calling the shots, I was returning from a small black leather jacket in the college lounge, with rabbit ears. Now the event was playing on my laptop, sitting in the ether on a platform managed – fittingly on Black Friday – by the largest online retailer.
Sports is commercial and commercial is sport. It has always been that way. That was evident enough in 1983, when Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson and Gary Player put it on a desert mountain in Arizona. Those girl skins of her patrons, their signs, her corporate imprint. But compared to Friday’s iteration – the 2025 capital One Skins Game – it felt as subtle as a trip to the mall. The total in the bag was then $360,000 – about a quarter of what the last hole is worth this time around – and the whole business was in the spirit of a holiday getaway. He planned golf but also the desert Sun and the rich among the four legends to get old. Even though the first skins were hacked, edited, and released over two days, it still gives you the feeling of stumbling upon something that’s not in the pre-magical text.
Then it was gone. After 2008, the event disappeared for 17 years, a hiatus good enough to skip a whole generation of fans. The decision to bring back the mark with departure from the wave of so much television these days, which, following TGLS and YouTube Influencer Tourneys, aims more at the younger generations. These skins were like a nod to Greybeards, a gentle place of memory.
Broadcasting depends on that nostalgia. It opened with highlights from the Inaugural opening program – retro graphics, sansabelts, arnold with silver hair – as if helping us to remember the four-man competition but the era that demolished it. Interviews with players from previous generations cut the coverage. Annika Sorenstam cried remembering that. So, he made a couple in Fred, conveying a lovely moment from when he revealed that he would give the launch of the 1st-tee until he saw the florida event, not the palm springs.
If anything, all the lures back helped the cast where it was free. Couples sums it up best: at this event, you don’t really have to worry about how you play. All you care about is money. As a fan, you can front the moolah, too, by placing a live wager on the action. Draftkings have downtime during the trade.
No one was the reason for this year’s bankruptcy. Xander Schauffele, Tommy Fleetwood, Shane Lowry and Keegan Bradley are the most popular players still, who still have the ability to put on spectacular performances. There was a little bit of that. Bradley played a lot and went with a lot of skins. The fiery purchauffele was closed but won the entertainment category with a sense of humor and humor, impromptu Sam burning the idea.
For all its hurling content, the event also had a recent history of being drawn in the form of the Ryder Cup, which added a dash of spice. Lowry couldn’t resist a jab at Bradley: “I just spent a couple of months breaking Keegan Bradley’s heart,” he said after birdieing the 2nd hole. Every viewer knew the context, no matter their age.
Commenting, at that time, was a very big thing, it is worth getting files, although it could be done without some sugar. Peter Jacobsen, a presence and a veteran of hit-and-giggles himself, tried to relieve the intensity of the nerves, as if this was kings and not a good-hearted payday. As if Fleetwood hadn’t snuck in at the last minute at his home in Dubai and cheated without the hassle of a cycle.
On top of any jet lag, he had to wake up in the morning to make his tee time, not because golf fans have been losing skins in the morning, but because the event needs to clear before the bears – the eagles are organized. Even the big 4 games
Do I sound like an old grump?
I don’t mean it. Most of the time, what I hear is melancholy, which should not be a celebration. In helping us get back to the way things used to be, Nostalgia also highlights what we feel has been lost. I am not cunning. I can’t believe that the early ’80s were still the age of innocence, or Jack and Arnie didn’t have it with the money. Is the world back then all different from today? Probably not. But I saw little of it. Come to think of it, maybe what I lost the most was my youth, something that no skin can take me back.
